Welcome to Zagreb, Croatia, home of Croteam,
the genius minds behind Serious Sam
and The Talos principle.
This is Admir, one of the original Croteam.
Hi.
Croteam HQ. We're going to go and have a look.
OK come on in.
So we're in the glamorous parking garage of Croteam HQ,
but we're not staying here are we? Where are we going?
To Dubrovnik. Beautiful.
Why are we going to Dubrovnik?
It will be a kind of Reboot game developer conference. Very nice.
So this is a big Croatian game development thing right? The Reboot festival?
Yeah, yeah, all will be...
The world. World famous Reboot!
Dubrovnik. Reboot.
We made it.
In there that's it.
Good driving Dean.
Yeah excellent, excellent.
Tell me about Reboot.
We are here in one of the most beautiful parts of the world in my opinion.
It's Damir which is organizing the Reboot.
He works so well and so many
amazing speakers, people here,
and everybody that visited Reboot once
comes back and brings his own friends,
so it's getting bigger and bigger every year.
I think everybody from Croteam is here, so like 50 people.
It's like a weekend party for Croteam. Team-building.
Yeah it's kind of a team-building and
it's our home turf, you know.
We are here also to show people how proud we are of
our country and what we made.
What was your role this year because you've done
something a bit special this year.
Yeah I did a keynote and I dedicated the
keynote to Game Developers and
talked a little bit about what we do and why we do it.
You were introduced as a local industry legend.
Well I don't know how...
what to say about that, you know.
I was very flattered.
Live up to the legend status. He's a legend!
But what's Croteam's involvement in Reboot then?
What's your role here?
Well I think that Damir knows how
old and let's say... I don't know...
In Croatia we are kind of like
the biggest and best known I don't know...
You're like the grandads of Croatian game development.
Actually they call me the grandpa of Croatian game development.
Oh really?
Yeah.
I hit the nail on the head. Got it.
Our dream is to have as many people working on game development
on games because we like happy people and working in game development
makes you happy.
Hello, hello. Good morning everyone.
Thank you Damir for inviting me here.
I have to say I'm very excited to be here and
it's always great to talk in front of
a large audience of game developers and other people from the games industry.
Croteam started when?
I actually don't know, something like 25, 27 years ago.
It was a dream to live out from making games which we really love to play.
We worked like crazy for several years and then it all took off.
Most of us were really close friends, best friends.
You're a strong family unit, I mean...
Mafia.
Mafia!
What has kept you at Croteam for such a long time?
Well, it was never boring, it was always very interesting, and we are always making great stuff.
And always the next project that we are working on right now is always
something very interesting, and then when we do that there's always the plan for the next one,
so why would we do anything else?
You're a tight crew as well, people don't tend to leave much.
Yeah. Well, there are several reasons for that I think.
One is that we are good friends and we
are making great stuff so why would you want to leave? But the reality is also that,
especially in Croatia, we have nowhere to leave to, you know?
Because we were for a long time the only game developer,
at least the only serious game developer in Croatia.
I've been working as Croteam's music composer, sound designer for
the past 18 years.
So I was also a first person shooter freak, I love playing
these games, and when I first saw Serious Sam it was awesome. I loved it,
every second of it, and the guys were a little bit scared, you know showing
the game to someone else, and when they saw how excited I was
it was like we bonded even more.
You were there bringing the music,
but the good vibes on Serious Sam as well.
That's what they say.
What is the spirit of Croteam?
It's kind of two opposites: it's professional and relaxed.
The first rule of Croteam: the game that we make,
we must love it ourselves
with all our hearts.
You've been together for the so long, do you ever have little fights?
You always have fights, right?
Without fights there's no love.
When you first started your first game was what?
A clone of Sokoban, a logic puzzle,
puzzle logic game. It was proof that we know how to make... finish a game.
And then we agreed to make a football game, Football Glory,
back then on the Amiga, and yeah it was a pretty big success at the time, we earned some money,
so it was a sign that we could do it.
After we made the soccer game and shipped it
the Amiga market disappeared and then we had to switch over and decided,
in the end we decided we're gonna make a first-person shooter.
It sounds pretty straightforward but we worked for like seven years on it.
We were all at University back then and we used to work in our spare time
and during the holidays and everything, so it took a lot of time.
Some people actually got drafted into the army and they came back and we were still
working on the game.
Back in that time there was no digital distribution
and if you wanted to ship something you had to go to a publisher,
and we were trying to find one.
No one was interested.
So it's really weird because we thought this...
look at this it's really good.
You believed in the game, right? You this was a good...
Everybody who tried it said it's really good and
the teams that were supposed to recognize a good project they still said no,
so it was like, what? What? Why? What's going on?
And we were on the edge of actually going extinct, like almost being
dead, but then the internet came in and we created a demo
and put it on the internet and everything exploded.
Where did the name come from?
Actually it is our CEOs, Serious Sam, and actually I don't know,
I was just told how the game will be called.
First when I heard the name I was frowning, you know, Serious Sam...
Are you serious?
Really? Are you serious?
Honestly. But the CEO Roman was so into it, you know, he managed to pass this
infectious vibe, you know, it's gonna be a good name, it's gonna be a good name,
and it ended up one of the most memorable names
in the first-person shooter genre, so
I guess he was right.
Reboot tourist tour of Dubrovnik. This place is amazing.
Yeah it's amazing.
It's better than the LACC at E3 right?
Yeah probably.
When we were driving here from Zagreb I was looking at the scenery and thinking,
I feel like now I understand where the look for Talos Principle came from.
When we were working on Talos Davor took a couple of guys to an old Roman trade post...
In Croatia?
Yeah near Split, and they took a lot of
pictures and we scanned all those remains of the trade post.
Where did The Talos Principle come from?
It came out of nowhere practically because
we didn't start working on Talos Principle, we started working on Serious Sam 4.
We tried to address one complaint from part of our audience where they
said in Serious Sam games you do only shoot, shoot, shoot, you do nothing else.
We had some brainstorming and we had a few idea what we could we do
and I made much more complex puzzles. The thing was that the the more complicated
the puzzle was the more fun it was to play. But those more complicated puzzles were
solved from from 15 minutes to half an hour and it was obvious that we cannot
implement that in Serious Sam 4. But we had something very interesting on our hands.
So that became the Talos Principle. And another legend was born.
Of course.
Did it feel good when the Talos Principle came out and that was
something very different for you guys.
Yes, I don't know how to say, we were not that confident.
We were not sure what was going to happen.
We thought maybe we were going to ship it and
everyone's going say that it's not worth it, and we were a bit scared of that,
but when people started giving good feedback then we were like, OK it's great.
Not only was it a great game but it was very successful as well.
Yeah that was really surprising, we didn't expect that.
But at the end it was a really, really huge success for us.
The name the Talos Principle was your idea?
Yes, yes that was mine.
I'm part Greek, grew up in Greece and I remembered that particular bit of mythology.
I find it very fascinating. Because Talos is sort of a robot and I thought
that would be an interesting element.
Did you do the music for Talos as well?
Yes.
Now that must have been a different question. How did you approach that?
That is a completely different thing than Serious Sam. I mean the first thing we tried
for Talos is the Serious Sam music.
Really?
Yeah, I mean, we had it, we just put some
of the Serious Sam stuff inside and since the Serious Sam music is heavily
rhythm oriented, it's based on drums and stuff like this, so the first rule we
established is no rhythmic patterns, you know, so...
Well you, mr. rhythm man, that must have been a challenge for you.
I bet you were like, oh sh*t how the hell do I do that?
They just took away my most precious tool,
you know, the rhythm.
Did you come away from that going, wow I can do it.
I mean doing music for me is always fun but doing music for Talos was
challenging more than fun.
Are you still there?
So what's the end game with VR then? Why all this investment?
First time when I play games it was so excited, right?
Then when 3D came that was like mind-blowing, right?
And this was the third time I actually felt something really, really exciting about that.
We were always implementing new technologies, right, that's something that we did and
then I created a demo, I gave it to the people, and all the people were amazed.
I would really like to have the best available arcade game in VR.
I thought that we can do it, I think that we actually did it with The Last Hope.
And of course the natural extension was that people demanded, and
also we felt that it would be nice, to play other Croteam games in VR.
People would be surprised how how much you have to do to create a VR game. It's a big effort.
I noticed that Croatia likes its soccer, right? There's quite a lot of football fans here.
Actually we won the tournament last year so we need to
defend the title this year, so it will be...
That's going to be a fight.
It will be interesting.
Croteam!
Did Croteam win or lose that one?
It was a win. It was a clear victory...
It was definitely a win. I'm not mentioning any names, but it was a win.
There was a win.
What's going to happen in Serious Sam 4?
Well, obviously I can't say much.
Big levels, large amount of enemies, new inventive stuff and new ways to attack
the player, new ways for the player to fight back.
The Talos Principal was
born out of a mechanic that was originally for Serious Sam 4 so
are you bringing any of the Talos Principle into Serious Sam?
We will probably
include some things from the Talos Principle and we will probably have
something even more complex, but probably in some secret area or something
and not on the main path.
Some tasty Easter eggs for the Talos fans.
Yeah some optional stuff but
we won't overdo it, you know. We know what Serious Sam stands for and what our fans
and community is expecting from us and we will deliver.
So where are you going to take this for Sam 4 then?
I think we're going to do a blockbuster thing this time.
We're going to keep it with heavy beats, the largest drums that you can hear, you know.
They're just pounding away and I think your heart is gonna beat,
the pump is going to explode out of the chest when this rhythm starts.
This is Duro. This is his show. How'd it go?
It went really well this year.
You've got some pretty big names from all over the place come here.
I would say we have one of
the best speaker lineups out there, not just in Europe but even in the world.
What are Croteam really like?
How they are like? Wow.
Well, Croteam, they're very complicated. From the outside they look like they
have a very hard shell, like they're really hard to reach, like they're tough guys,
but actually under the shell they're those soft, warm and cuddly
teddy bears, very emotional. If they were not here the event itself would have never
been as big as this.
A little round of applause for Duro from Reboot here.
Thank you. Woo!
Whenever we release something new, every time, the first question is, where is Serious Sam 4?
Of course it is.
Of course, and I completely understand the fans, but
my saying is, please wait a bit more, it's going to be worth it.
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